Sephardi, Veggie, & Simple Jewish soul food from a small kitchen on Earth

Castilian Brazilian

When you love food and cooking, I suppose there really could never be enough good “food movies” out there. I’ve seen most of the classics (Big Night, Like Water for Chocolate, Eat Drink,Man Woman, Babette’s Feast, etc) and the non-classics, which -without apology- I love just as much (Spanglish, No Reservations). And when I discover a new one it’s like a revelation, even when it’s not original, subtle or brilliant. Woman On Top hasenough food, sex, coconut milk and beautiful people (Penelope Cruz, in particular) to more than make up for its campy romance, plus it has some really great performances by Cruz- who carries the film without effort, and Harold Perrineau (Lost’s Michael) as her childhood friend-turned sassy transvestite.

Watch it soon and you may be inspired to make something like this:

Brazilian Stew with Coconut milk

This simple but very tasty recipe is from Gourmet Today and calls for shrimp, which I substituted easily with pressed tofu. Pressing tofu simply means that you drain a block of firm or extra firm tofu, place it on a a few towels, place a few more towels on top of it, and then set something heavy on top like a cookbook or two. Let it press for 20-30 minutes before using it in your recipe.

Caribbean Rice Salad sounds like a nice compliment- I would have made rice but we had some baguette to use up and actually I though it went really nicely with the stew. Popovers are a little tricky, but you can actually season the batter with anything…cayenne, some grated cheese etc. Popovers and eggs: yum!